Exodus 32:1-14

If you are not interested in the full text of the Bible and don’t want to believe God or Moses ever killed people in cold blood, close your Bibles after reading this passage and skip over the rest of the chapter, just like your Lectionary does. I’ve pointed out a few places where the Lectionary includes some uncomfortable and difficult to interpret verses, but more often it skips them. Here, they give us the part about Moses arguing against God, saying he shouldn't burn his wrath against them. It would be great if the Bible was full of these stories of man arguing with God and winning that argument. Moses makes a good point, obviously. And for a few pages, God listens.

Theoretically, these stories came first, then got assembled into the chronological order we now have. If they would have left out the entire story, people would have noticed it, and might have written counter-narratives that might have survived. That didn't happen so the best we can do is try to figure out what the original stories were. It may be that parts of the story were originally one author responding to something another had written but are now combined in this one story.

Aaron here likely represents the Northern Kingdom, probably where the golden calf story comes from. The “Judah” source of the narrative was combined with it, painting the Northern kingdom in a negative light. Aaron is somewhat let off the hook, so there is some harmonization, or it might be more like confusion about what these stories were originally meant to mean and what they became later. Friedman, author of “Who Wrote the Bible”, says this story attacks both the Israelite and Judean establishments. I’m not as concerned with determining political intent as I am with finding meaning, and I think all this redaction and mixing makes that impossible in this case.

Isaiah 25:1-9

In the middle of October, this very Easter sounding passage appears. Conquering death and awaiting the day when God will wipe away death, or at least the need to fear death. We are coming up on All Saints’ Day, a day to remember our loved ones who have departed. So this may be a comment about when this age can be fully established. This seems to be a very inclusive passage, but on further review, it is another of those challenging bits of scripture, one that asks to consider just who “all” is. The Isaiah writers could not resist excluding at least one group in the very next verse:

10 For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain,
and Moab shall be trampled down in his place,
as straw is trampled down in a dunghill.

Philippians 4:1-9

We get a glimpse into the role of women in this passage, but that’s it, a glimpse. Euodia and Syntyche are being urged to be of the same mind. Was there something going on where they weren’t? Were others arguing with them? It’s not entirely clear. It does appear they are in leadership roles, which may have been unusual, but not unheard of in Macedonia. Paul gives us his usual advice of knowing Christ is near and that we should be like him.

It’s pretty sappy on the face of it, but what else do we have? We have conflict, and we have forgiveness. Paul of course thinks we have a little more. He brings up the “Book of Life”. For the Jews, an annual ceremony of remembering and forgiving insures that you are in that book. For apocalyptic preachers, God put you in the book and there’s nothing you can do to get into it or out of it. The only thing you can do is prepare yourself for judgment day to show you earned being in there, if you are. Something like that, I don’t get those people.

Paul is also working on bringing this new idea, the idea that faith in Jesus will get you in the book, and you don’t need to renew it in an annual ceremony. Christ’s sacrifice did that for you.

Matthew 22:1-14

Another brutal story this week. If you take the traditional position that the king in the story is God, you have a god who gets enraged and sends troops to destroy people who mess with Him.

Using that interpretation, John Nolland offers a nice summary of the parable as a whole: “If the first part of the parable has to do with the decisive exclusion and replacement of those who fail to honour the summons when the wedding feast is ready, the second part of the parable has to do with the impossibility of coming to the wedding feast on one’s own terms. It is addressed to those who are confident that they have a place in the coming eschatological banquet.”

I usually reject that type of interpretation.

I like to take each Lection as it is, but sometimes comparing them to how they are copied or used elsewhere in the Bible is useful. In the Luke version (14:16-24), it’s a dinner, and there is no killing, just the anger, and no one gets kicked out in the end. Knowing that neither of these written versions came until well after the story had been told for decades, we can’t be sure that it is deserving of the “kingdom of heaven may be compared to” introduction that Matthew provides. It seems to parallel the King Herod slaughter of the innocents. It might have originally been an anti-king story.

But you would need more scholarly support for that idea.

The parable may seem bloodier than expected because of the personal nature of it, but if it is symbolic of a broader history, we have to accept that violence is a part of that history. Also, the history of the Jews is that they started with a god who supported them in war, just like most gods of the time, but when they were conquered, they didn’t abandon that god. They took it upon themselves that it was their lack of faith, their misdeeds of not following the law, that caused their misfortune. The guests not coming then is a reflection of all the critiques of earlier prophets and kings who failed the people.

It’s always good to remember that parables often use hyperbole. The Luke version paints a little more detail of the people who Matthew simply says “made light” of the invitation. The people are a bit dopey, going off to farm when they could get a free meal. The mistreating and retribution by burning their cities is not likely to mean that heaven is like some sort of perpetual gang violence, and more likely an allegory for the moral retribution narrative of the Jewish people. That is, don’t follow the law, and Babylonians will destroy your Temple, then Persians, then Romans.

The parable then moves on to the good news Jesus is bringing. Since Isaiah, they were told if they were good, good things would happen to them, but if they were bad, there wasn’t any way to heal that. Jesus offers that, simply believe in him, and you conquer death. In the parable, ‘The wedding is ready’ and everyone is invited, ‘both good and bad’. Then there’s verse 11, the big “but”.

Whenever you hear the good news of reconciliation, you also get some orders. This is serious business. You can come to the banquet, but you still need to present yourself to the king. You need to be prepared by living a life of service, not simply following your childish ways driven by ego and physical desires. This is the third parable in the series and the theme has been the judgment of how nations treat the poor and sick and needy. You need to get on the right side of that, or your invitation will be revoked.